


Icing on the Cupcake

by SneakyHufflepuff



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, POV: Clint, slightly cracky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-15
Updated: 2013-02-15
Packaged: 2017-11-29 10:56:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/686148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SneakyHufflepuff/pseuds/SneakyHufflepuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the be_compromised Valentine's Day promptathon at lj. For sugar_fey's prompt</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Clint and Natasha go undercover in a cupcake bakery. On Valentine's Day. Heaven help us all.</i></p><p> </p><p>Lots of sugar and empty fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Icing on the Cupcake

Clint resisted the urge to lick cupcake batter off his fingers. As tempting as it was, it would probably get him fired. Natasha was carefully squeezing a tube of icing to create a pink flower on the first of a dozen chocolate cupcakes. Her red hair was held back in a hair net and she wore her white apron like she was born in it.

Clint, his apron much less glamorous than Natasha's, looked at the order form that corresponded with the cupcakes she was icing. “Tasha, wait. Those cupcakes aren’t supposed to be that fancy.” There was a series of tiers, from economy to platinum, that the patrons could choose from when buying cupcakes. Natasha was currently doing a gold-level job on an economy-level order.

“See.”  Natasha furrowed her brow in concentration as she switched to green icing for the leaves. “This is the problem with capitalism. Customer two-hundred and thirty-seven over there.” She jerked her head to two boxes of platinum level cupcakes that were ready to ship out. “Gets the best cupcakes we have for his mistress and his wife. But two hundred and thirty-eight.” She looked down at the box in front of her. “Who is spending a much greater percentage of his income, gets the scraps.”

Clint restrained the urge to laugh at his partner and began to replace the icing that she had used so far. Natasha was responsible for decoration, Clint was the general dogsbody. “You don’t know it’s for a mistress and a wife. One could be for his mother. Or they could be in a polyamorous relationship.”

Natasha snorted. “Of course _you_ take two-hundred and thirty-seven’s side. Did you see him come in? He was shifting from foot to foot and dripping sweat. He knew he was doing something wrong. Not to mention how the messages for both are ‘with love.’ Unoriginal and low effort. Typical cheater. Compare that to the love letter two-thirty-eight wrote his girlfriend.” She waved the order form for emphasis. Two heartfelt paragraphs were squeezed into the message section of the form.

“Or you could tell me the real reason you’re mad,” Clint offered. “Is it because we’re working Valentine’s Day? You know, most people have to, if they’re not self-employed super-spies.”

Natasha stuck her tongue out at him. “I’m angry we’re working in a cupcake factory, instead of doing something useful,” she said by way of explanation. She lowered her voice, just in case one of the Nguyen siblings came into the back unexpectedly. “Anyone can see this isn’t a front for HYDRA. We didn’t have to infiltrate it.”

“Think of it as one down, nine to go.” A HYDRA agent had been seen coming and going from ten different businesses in the area on an almost daily basis. It was Clint and Natasha’s job to investigate all of them.

Natasha made a sound, that in anyone else, Clint would have called a groan. With Natasha, it was a sigh of dismay. “Not helpful, Clint.”

“Well then, think of it as helping a lovely elderly couple.” The reason they had infiltrated the cupcake bakery first was that Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen, who ran the bakery, had never had a Valentine’s Day off in twenty years. So their children had hired the two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents for the day as soon as they had seen Natasha’s (fake) pastry chef credentials.

Natasha finished with two-thirty-eight, and moved onto three Winnie the Pooh themed cupcakes. They fell back into the rhythm of work. Although they could just walk out now that they knew there was no HYDRA connection, Coulson would frown at them for being sloppy and the Nguyens’ day would be ruined. Better to go back to churning out cupcakes for the hopeless romantics of New Hampshire.

Despite his cynicism about the holiday, Clint found a certain type of pleasure in an honest day’s work that didn’t involve gunfights or hours spent in a sniper’s perch. He began to hum as he worked, moving boxes, replacing ingredients and washing batter encrusted equipment. He, Natasha and the Nguyens were a cupcake making machine, communicating mostly in grunts and nods.

It wasn’t until two hours later that Natasha and Clint got the chance to talk alone. Clint could see that Natasha was irritated. She hid it well, but the slight tension in her shoulders gave her away.

“So when are you going to tell me the real problem?” Clint asked. The workday was wrapping up, and she was on the last order.

“There is no problem, Clint.” A romantic someone thought that anatomically correct hearts would make the perfect gift. Natasha was carefully constructing them from icing, marshmallow and dyed maple sugar, then placing them on top of half a dozen red velvet cupcakes.

“Did the guy cancel on you?” Clint asked, rinsing off the last of the dirty equipment.

“What guy?” Natasha asked, genuinely surprised.

“I notice things, too,” Clint said smugly. “You have a guy. You’ve stopped assessing the attractive men around you as potential partners.” Clint began to list the reasons on his fingers. “You bailed on me for John Wayne movie night, which was just as good as I said it would be, by the way. You spend more time on your outfit when you leave work. There has to be a guy. When do I get to meet him?”

Natasha rolled her eyes, and started on the last heart.

“Can I threaten him?” Then a thought occurred to Clint. “Can we have Hill threaten him? She’s more scary then I am, and it wouldn’t be sexist that way.”

“Who says it’s a guy?” Natasha said, looking up from her work in exasperation.

Clint choked, feeling heat spread across his cheeks. He started to speak, stopped, then started again. “Anything I say now will be wrong, won’t it?”

Natasha smirked and pressed her advantage. “And why do you think that he needs to be threatened? I am capable of doing my own threatening.”

“So it _is_ a he. Is it Daniels? He looks really happy lately.”

“One, Daniels is with Fox. How did you not notice that? And two, you didn’t answer my question. Why would you want to meet, let alone threaten, my date?” Natasha closed the box of cupcakes and set them on the counter. They were finished for the day.

“Well, it’s just that you’ve had two former flames come back from the dead and try to kill you. And your last boyfriend was a renfaire re-enactor. Face it, Tash, you need help.”

“You use a bow. In your job. And everyday life. Yet you’re making fun of renfaire re-enactors?” Natasha took her hair out of its bindings and shook it loose. Red strands curled down her back in disarray after a day spent confined.

“That’s different,” Clint insisted, momentarily mesmerized by Natasha’s hair.

“We haven’t even started to talk about your past relationships. Because I’m sure I could call Bobbi, and see what she has to say.” 

Clint winced. “Or we could just call it even?”

“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll make you a giant cupcake, and you stop bugging me.” 

“Deal!” Clint said, rubbing his hands together. “Wait! A chocolate one, with purple icing.”

“Deal.”

They shook on it, a wry twist to Natasha’s mouth.

“And it can’t be poisoned,” Clint added.

“We already shook on it. I can poison it all I want,” Natasha pointed out. Clint looked betrayed at the prospect of delicious pastry corrupted.

Tracy Nguyen took that moment to walk in. “All done then?” she asked, looking around at the now immaculate bakery. “Good job.”

Natasha turned to Tracy, putting on her mask as Ali Royal, bubbly chef. “Thanks so much for the opportunity.”

“If you need a job next year, just let us know,” Tracy said. “And have a Happy Valentine’s Day.”

“Will do,” Ali said with a giggle. Clint felt his skin crawl. He always felt he was with a different person when Natasha went from one persona to the next. He admired her for it, but it could be creepy.

Natasha and Clint collected their things and began to leave. Tracy pulled Clint aside. “You got her something, right?” she asked, eyes flicking to Natasha.

“Uh,” Clint started.

Tracy shoved a box of cupcakes into his hands. “Men!” she exclaimed, shaking her head.

Clint carried the box outside to the car. It was in the bakery’s signature teal, wrapped with a white ribbon.

Natasha sidled up alongside him. “Ooh, cupcakes.” She was still in persona as Ali, but the avaricious gleam in her eyes was all Natasha.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Clint replied, handing her the box.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have. I didn’t get you anything,” Natasha joked as they strolled towards the car, Natasha tossing Clint the keys.

“I’m driving?” Clint asked in surprise.

“You get to drive, I get first choice of the cupcakes,” Natasha explained to Clint, sliding into the passenger seat.

“Of course,” Clint said. “The great Natasha Romanoff always has her own mysterious motives.” He backed out of the employee parking lot.

“And Ali Royal would probably let the guy drive,” Natasha reminded Clint, as he navigated the one and a half lane street the bakery was nestled on.

“Ali’s a good cover. It’s a shame you’re only going to get to use her once,” Clint said, mind searching around for a topic that wouldn’t bug her and thus cost him his promised giant cupcake.

“A pastry chef? Of course I’ll use her again. We have spoons in every pot.” She tapped the side of her nose dramatically, like a spy from an old movie.

“One day as a pastry chef and you’re already part of the secret society?” Clint asked with a smile.

“I got an initiation tattoo and everything. It’s a crest with a rolling pin and a whisk,” Natasha told him, straight-faced. “And I learned a secret handshake. I’d teach you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

“Of course. You don’t want to mess with chefs. I hear they’re good with knives.”

“It’s the boiling oil you have to watch out for.” Natasha unwrapped the white ribbon with a flourish and flipped the box open. From the corner of his eye Clint could see her face transform into an emotionless mask. “Pull over,” she said, voice flat.

Clint pulled onto the tiny shoulder of the road, wincing as the car vibrated on the gravel. He wondered if he should have checked what type of cupcakes they were before handing them over to her. If they were all vanilla Natasha would be pissed. He turned the engine, unbuckled his seatbelt and turned to Natasha.

“You didn’t get those cupcakes for me, did you?” Natasha asked, head tilted to the side and lips slightly open.

“No. Tracy gave them to me to give to you. I wasn’t going to turn down free cupcakes.” As Clint spoke, he realized that Natasha was doing the thing she did where she'd interrogate someone without them even noticing. His heart sank. He thought that after more than three years of partnership she’d trust him to answer honestly without manipulation.

Wordlessly, Natasha turned the box so he could see it. Inside were a dozen small cupcakes, with little ‘be mine’ candies stuck in the pink and red frosting. They were vanilla. Damn.

“I would never get you vanilla cupcakes,” Clint assured her. “But if you don’t want them...” He reached for a cupcake, uncertain what was wrong with his partner. Still, he wasn’t going to let perfectly good cupcakes go to waste.

Natasha closed her eyes in frustration. Clearly Clint was missing something. She opened them and took a deep breath. “Clint, will you be my Valentine?” she asked.

“Oh.” Clint felt his heart stop. His hand clenched around the cupcake that was half lifted to his mouth, sending pastry and icing flying. He stared at his partner for a moment, unable to believe those words came from her lips. “Seriously?”

“Maybe it was a bad idea,” Natasha conceded, turning away from Clint and crossing her arms under her breasts. Clint could see she was already building emotional walls between them.

“No. It's a great idea.” Clint reached for her cheek, but stopped short of touching her at the glare she gave him. “Given our relationship history, it might end with death and destruction, but I’m willing to take that risk.” Clint smiled at her, heartened when she gave him a beautiful smile in return. A smile he had only seen a few times before, a smile which crinkled the edge of her eyes and mouth. He wanted to see that smile again. “And while some might view your exes coming back from the grave as creepy, I view it as an insurance policy.”

Natasha laughed, a raw throaty sound so unlike Ali’s earlier giggle. Clint felt his heart melt. Then she bit her lip, still uncertain. “You’re not scared? This could go really wrong, really fast.”

Clint grinned. “I’m terrified. But you’re worth it. And I really don’t want you to poison that cupcake.”

Natasha leaned towards him. “Play your cards right, and I’ll even make you pie.” Coming from Natasha, that was worth all the heartfelt declarations of love in the world. She sealed the promise with a kiss.


End file.
